13 November 2018 :

Buncombe County Judge Alan Z. Thornburg has re-sentenced James Morgan to life without possibility of parole, removing him from the state's death row. After consultation with the vicitim's family, the county district attorney agreed to drop the death penalty as a result of neuropsychological testing showed that Morgan had suffered from severe brain damage since childhood that significantly contributed to his conduct at the time of the offense. A Buncombe County jury at the time found that James Lewis Morgan, now 63, Black, on November 26, 1997 had stabbed Patrina King 48 times in front of his mother's home. In court Friday, nobody disputed Morgan's conviction. But Morgan's attorneys said that the court had violated their client's right to due process in handling his sentencing more than a decade prior. Morgan was represented by 5 different attorneys in a matter of months and had not been afforded proper psychological evaluation prior to his sentencing in 1999, which the Supreme Court has said is a necessary component of indigent defense services. As a result, the all-white jury that sentenced Morgan to death knew nothing of the severe traumatic brain injuries that Morgan had suffered "during the course of his life, starting in childhood." Though Morgan's crime was gruesome - and he'd been convicted of second degree murder in 1976 - neuropsychological testing conducted after his original sentencing showed that his cognitive ability had been severely limited due to trauma before he fatally stabbed King, his lawyers said.

14 June 2018 :

The North Carolina Supreme Court reversed 5-2 the death sentence imposed on Juan Carlos Rodriguez in Forsyth County, finding that the trial judge prejudicially failed to direct the jury to consider Rodriguez's impaired capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law. Evidence indicated that Rodriguez, a Salvadoran national whose family fled that country's civil war when he was a child, had an IQ in the intellectually disabled range, although the jury rejected his claim of intellectual disability. Rodriguez was sentenced on March 21, 2014 (see) for strangling his estranged wife and then decapitating her. Prosecutors allege that Juan Rodriguez beat Maria Magdalena Rodriguez, 31, on the night of Nov. 18, 2010, after she told him she was leaving him.

01 May 2018 :

Decline in Death Verdicts Highlights Penalty's Cost, Ineffectiveness. Death sentences are sharply down in North Carolina and the combination of cost concerns and more effective representation have made them progressively rare. In an interview with The Hickory Daily Record, David Learner, District Attorney for the 25th prosecutorial district encompassing Catawba, Caldwell, and Burke counties, who has personally tried two death-eligible cases, says “It’s extraordinarily difficult to get a death verdict. ... You come to realize it’s very difficult for a jury seated in that box to say ‘yes, you need to kill that man'.” Murder cases in which the death penalty may be sought are defended by five regional capital defender offices, which have a record of effectively investigating cases and negotiating non-capital outcomes. According to statistics maintained by the North Carolina Office of Indigent Defense Services (NCIDS), from 2007 to 2015, nearly 60% of capital prosecutions ended with non-capital convictions for second-degree murder or less, and only 2.2 percent of all capital cases in the state resulted in death sentences. In Wake County, juries have returned life verdicts in eight consecutive capital sentencing trials. With representation by the regional capital defenders, there have been only 5 death sentences in the state over the past five years, down from 140 death sentences imposed 20 years ago in the five years spanning 1992-1996. No one has been executed in the state since 2006 and most of the 262 prisoners who the North Carolina Department of Public Safety (NCDPS) says have been removed from death row have been resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after their convictions or death sentences were overturned. Although 98% of North Carolina cases that start out as capital do not end up with a death sentence, pursuing the death penalty has had significant financial consequences. NCIDS reports that, in fiscal years 2007 to 2015, the average costs were 4.4 times higher in a capital case ($93,231 per case) than when prosecutors did not pursue the death penalty ($21,022 per case). A Duke University study in 2009 concluded that repeal of the death penalty would have produced approximately $10.8 million in annual savings from reduced expenditures on murder cases. Between 2008 and 2013, the percentage of cases in which prosecutors have sought the death penalty has fallen from 28.1% to 11%, and budget cuts to the North Carolina Attorney General's office have shifted to local district attorneys the cost of criminal appeals that used to be handled by state prosecutors. Learner said. “Realizing the reality of the death penalty in North Carolina through the court system, it’s really about worthless.” Looking to the future, he said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if North Carolina eventually had a moratorium or completely dismantled the death penalty.”